


flashes of love (in every single colour)

by girl412



Series: assigned ineffable at birth [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, Non-Linear Narrative, Other, Post-Canon, Trans Character, Transphobia, at this time she's femme though, aziraphale is ready to kick ass if needed, crowley has a few encounters with terfs & transphobes, that's right it's nanny ashtoreth, warlock dowling is an artist and guess who he's painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 18:44:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20430683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girl412/pseuds/girl412
Summary: Warlock Dowling is an artist, even if he's just 14. He's painting Nanny Ashtoreth.Crowley is in Aziraphale's bookshop, talking about transphobia.There's a future full of love. The thing about love? it's ineffable.





	flashes of love (in every single colour)

**Author's Note:**

> hi ok i wouldn't be myself if i weren't so damn weak for nanny ashtoreth content. also crowley is my self-projection demon, which means i took all my nonbinary feels and my 'cis people back off' and my gay energy and made her absorb it. i'm not sorry.
> 
> this is mostly soft! yeah, there's mentions of transphobia, but it's mostly in the context of "people keep asking me questions i'm not comfortable with + making me uncomfortable". no slurs are used, no descriptions of dysphoria! there's an encounter with a TERF but it's essentially crowley misunderstanding the term "gender critical" and expecting her to be a progressive feminist, so you can probably guess how that ends :/ 
> 
> i'm probably going to make a series, and i promise i'll give y'all happy trans nanny ash content with lil warlock because oooooh i love that boy. anyway!!! here you go. hope you enjoy!

Warlock reaches for the paints. reds, auburns. Something like a forest fire, something like the Richard Siken’s “_War of Foxes_” cover. It needs to be copper, alluring, the colour that you notice immediately in a crowd, but not too vibrant either. Sort of soft and woodsy, could look brown in the right light. He’d bought a tube of lipstick in that colour on one of those days he’d snuck out of school during their free hour. It’d reminded him of _home. _

-  


“We’re closed today,” Aziraphale calls out, but then looks up. It’s just Crowley. She’s in a sundress today, a dainty gossamer thing that’s the same colour as her eyes – not that anyone can see her eyes, her sunglasses on as always. Her hair’s done up in that femme way, almost up to her shoulders in length, choppy and partially braided. She’s wearing a shade of lipstick that’s dark enough to pass for goth, but given what she’s wearing, manages to merely look preppy.

It’s her posture that unsettles Aziraphale. Crowley, no matter how they’re presenting, is always fidgety, restless, moving like they can barely keep still. Right now, she’s standing in a way that Aziraphale can really only describe as _quiet_. Something’s happened. 

Aziraphale clicks his fingers. the door shuts, locks, and the curtains gently sweep closed. He walks up to Crowley, gently puts an arm on her shoulder. 

“Sweetheart, won’t you tell me what’s wrong?” 

-  


Yellows, next. Warlock knew he wasn’t meant to have seen what he’d seen, but that didn’t change that he’d seen it. Nanny sitting by the garden, her glasses askew. Brother Francis saying something to her, something that made her give him a look that was outright stern, but she looked like she was trying not to smile. She looked beautiful, Warlock thought, and maybe it was a trick of the light but her eyes looked yellow in the light, as if she didn’t have any white bits, just a yellow eyeball with a black pupil. 

Warlock tries to remember the exact shade of yellow, going through the colours. Something magnetic. Something like buttercups, sunshine. Something _warm. _

-

“And, and,” Crowley says, between a shudder that could’ve been a sob, Aziraphale isn’t sure, “I just, you know. I assumed when she said gender critical, she meant critical of the gender binary, critical of colonialization and the absolutely arbitrary sex system humans have made up for themselves; seriously thought she was recognizing that gender was a construct and that often used to control people, or whatever, and I thought she’d be a friend, and recognize that –” 

Crowley breaks off, and _fuck_, a tear drips down her cheek, and Aziraphale reaches for her gently, wipes it with his hand and leaves his hand on her cheek, as tender as he can make it. Crowley makes a little noise, and then goes on. “I thought she’d, you know, understand that expressing my gender like this was what empowered me, but _No_, she wanted to know what was in my _pants, _like, angel, seriously,” Crowley laughs, but it sounds choked up. “And she thinks I’m not a _real _woman because, whatever, I don’t know, maybe she should realize that what I _am _is none of her business anyway, and she was so rude – ” She pauses, takes a shaky breath.

“And it’s so difficult, Aziraphale,” she continues, curling in on herself a little more. _Snake, _Aziraphale remembers. He sits next to her on the couch gingerly, puts his arms around her properly. She leans heavily against him, more than half her body pressing against his. It feels like she doesn’t weigh anything. Aziraphale worries for a minute, before remembering that Crowley doesn’t _need _to eat and she’s never been as fond of eating as he has, anyway. 

“Strangers just, laugh at me, I can hear them,” she murmurs. “They call me rude names, make inappropriate comments. Men wolf-whistle at me, some women say I’m not allowed in women’s spaces, this random girl pressed her hand to my abdomen _without permission _and asked if I have a uterus, why would she want to know _what I have inside my skin_, Aziraphale, I am _so _tired.” 

“I’m sorry, love,” Aziraphale says. He knows it’s not enough, but he doesn’t know what else to say. “It’s awful that they’re going out of their way to make you and people like you feel unsafe.” 

Crowley shudders again, presses her face against Aziraphale’s shoulder. 

“My sweet girl,” Aziraphale says, softly. “May I remove your glasses? Certainly this can’t be comfortable for you.” 

Crowley nods her head almost imperceptibly.

Aziraphale removes them gently, places them on the table by the sofa. He kisses her forehead lightly.

“You’re beautiful,” Aziraphale says softly, “and anyone who thinks otherwise can _get fucked._”

That startles a laugh out of Crowley. 

“Oh, you silly bastard angel,” she murmurs fondly. “I love you.” 

“Love you too, my prima donna demon,” Aziraphale says, his tone besotted at best.

-

Her dress, Warlock thinks. Red and black, of course. Prim and proper but at the same time, somehow suggesting that she was the exact opposite of that. They’d played games together; murder games, war games, games in which she’d describe what she called “the perfect place” and he’d draw the same place, except absolutely destroyed. Sometimes she’d sing under her breath, and when he’d ask her what she was singing she’d seem surprised that she was even doing it. _Queen, _she’d say. It took him a while to realise that she’d given him the exact answer to his question, and then it took him less than 15 minutes to download “Best of Queen” onto his iPod touch. He listens to it when he misses her. 

Right now, he’s listening to _Don’t Stop Me Now, _and working on painting her outfit as accurately as he can. It needs to look vintage. It needs to look elegant. It needs to make her look taller, make her look powerful, badass, and somehow comforting. Like she could protect you from anything.

-

“It’s not really me I’m worried about,” Crowley murmurs.

“No?” Aziraphale asks.

She shakes her head, her hair bobbing along with the motion of her head.

“It’s the other trans and nonbinary kids,” she says. “Aziraphale, you don’t know how cruel humans can be.” 

Aziraphale gives her a questioning look. He _does _know just how cruel humans can be; he thought she knew this. 

“I’m not trying to say that you’ve never been through this sort of thing from humans, I know you know they can be cruel, it’s just,” Crowley says to clarify, “I’ve filled six millennia’s worth of reports about people and evil and sin, angel. People aren’t all bad, I know, but it’s easy for humans to be causally cruel, Aziraphale. They’re not like us.” 

“And how are they not like us?” Aziraphale asks.

“Their mistakes don’t haunt them the way ours haunt us,” Crowley says softly. “They don’t have to deal with the consequences all through eternity. They’re not accountable to it forever. Not like you and me are.” 

Aziraphale kisses the corner of her mouth. “I know what you mean,” he says. “But remember, they have scope for good, too.”

“Oh, I _know_,” Crowley says, with a sharp smile. “I’ve always known. That’s why I was such a lousy demon, really. Hell couldn’t wait to fire me.”

“It’s ineffable,” Aziraphale says. “You’re where you belong now: here, with me.” 

“Yeah,” Crowley says, soft.

-

Warlock wonders if 14 is too old to be painting a picture of his childhood nanny, but he can’t bring himself to care. He has photographs of her in an album, in which she’s smiling at him. Even though Nanny pretended to condemn love, he’d always known that she loved him with all her heart, in a way that his parents never had, never could.

He puts the final touches on the painting and tries to remember the feeling of her arms around him, enveloping him in a hug. Of all the times he’d fallen asleep sitting on her lap, his head on her shoulder. He wishes she’d left a way for him to contact her. A phone number, an address, something for him to stay in touch. 

He picks up the leaflet, stares at the competition topic.

“_What reminds you of love,_” it says. 

He reads through the guidelines for entering, and he looks at the painting of Nanny Ashtoreth again. It’s one of the best pieces of work he’s made, if not _the _best.

He takes out a ballpoint pen from his pocket and begins filling in the registration form on the back of the leaflet. 

-

Later that night, before going to bed, Crowley will open a wooden box with intricate carvings on its surface (a gift from Aziraphale, sometime during the medieval ages.) Inside the box, there is one photograph. It’s a photograph of Lilith Ashtoreth and little Warlock Dowling, asleep curled up against her while she smiles at him. Nobody would believe that Lilith Ashtoreth was a demon by looking at the photo. The love in her eyes is clear for everyone to see. 

At the same time, in his too-large bedroom full of things-he-doesn’t-really-need, Warlock Dowling will lie down on his bed, as the ABBA song goes, “_staring at the ceiling, wishing she was somewhere else instead_.” Warlock will let himself wonder for a single, fleeting moment, what his life would’ve been like if he’d been born a girl. Then, he’ll turn the lights off. He’ll close his eyes, and he’ll remember. He’ll go to sleep, and he’ll hope he dreams of pain. 

Little does he know that his beloved Nanny Ashtoreth is actually renowned demon Crowley, who is hoping the exact opposite for him.

**Author's Note:**

> send me asks @ botanicallycrowley if you want i guess???? also kudos = high-five thru cyberspace so. if you wanna do that i will Never say no lmaooooooooo


End file.
